Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Secession Building

The Secessin building is an exhibition hall built in 1897 by Joseph Maria Olbrich as an architectural manifesto for the Vienna Secession (also known as "the Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession") whichwas formed that same year by a group of Austrian artists
including painters, sculptors, and architects. The first president of the
Secession was Gustav
Klimt, and Rudolf von
Alt was made honorary president. The Secession artists objected to the prevailing conservatism of the long-established fine art institution Vienna Künstlerhaus with its traditional orientation toward Historicism. The construction of the Secession building, a key work of Viennese Art Nouveau, was finished after only 6 months. Needless to say that the architecture didn´t meet the taste of that time: The building was dismissed as a "a bastard between temple and warehouse" and "a cross
between a greenhouse and a blast furnace", the dome was compared to "a head of cabbage".